Shanghai Visa-Free Travel Guide: The Bund, Old Town and Top Things to Do

Shanghai is China's biggest city and the place most first-time visitors start. It's where old China meets modern China, where you can eat soup dumplings for breakfast and stand at the top of the world's second-tallest building by lunch, and where the subway is so clean and efficient you'll wish your home city had copied it.

If you're coming from one of the countries on China's visa-free lists, you don't need a visa to visit Shanghai. Shanghai is covered by three of China's major visa-free policies.

This guide explains which visa-free option you can use to visit Shanghai, then walks you through the places worth your time, the food you shouldn't miss, and how to fit it all into a 1-day, 3-day or 5-day trip.

Which Visa-Free Policy Can You Use to Visit Shanghai?

Three different policies can get you into Shanghai without a visa. Which one you use depends on your passport and on the length of your trip.

The 30-day visa-free policy. If your country is on China's 30-day list, you can come for up to 30 days. Nothing to apply for, no embassy, no fee. If you're on this list, it's probably the best way to travel to China visa-free.

The 240-hour transit policy. Officially this is a transit policy, but 10 days is enough for a whole trip. You just need to plan your flights as a transit.

It works like this: you fly from country A, you stay in China, then you fly on to country B. Your layovers and the rest of your trip don't matter. Only two things count: the last country you landed in before China, and the first country you land in after China. Those two have to be different.

Mutual visa exemption. A smaller group of countries has a two-way agreement with China. If yours is one of them, you use that instead. How many days you can stay depends on your nationality.

Here's the part that confuses people. If the 240-hour transit is your only visa-free option and you're flying in and back out to the same country, that doesn't count as transit. For a trip like that you'd need a visa.

Not sure which one applies to you? Our China visa-free countries hub walks through all of them and tells you which fits your trip.

We also have a separate Shanghai layover and transit guide if you're just stopping between flights and want to leave the airport for a few hours. That page is for layovers. This one is the full tourism guide.

The Bund and the Pudong Skyline

The Bund is a wide riverside walkway in the middle of Shanghai. One side is lined with big stone buildings from the 1920s and 1930s that used to be banks and hotels. They look European because Europeans built them.

Across the water is Pudong. That's the modern side, where all the skyscrapers are.

This is the view people come to Shanghai for. Old stone buildings behind you, a wall of glass towers in front of you, and a river in between.

Walk it once in the day and once at night. They feel like two different places. At night the towers light up, boats cross the river, and the whole thing stops looking like a city and starts looking like a film set.

If you want to go up a tower, pick one. You don't need all three.

Shanghai Tower

Best for going as high as you possibly can

Building

632 m

Viewing deck

546 m, floor 118

Shanghai World Financial Center

Best for the glass floor and looking straight down

Building

492 m

Viewing deck

474 m, floor 100

Oriental Pearl Tower

Best for the postcard shape, plus a museum at the bottom

Building

468 m

Viewing deck

351 m, top sphere

Towers drawn to relative scale.

One thing worth knowing: if the weather is grey, skip all of them. A view from the 118th floor on a cloudy day is just white.

It's quicker if you book tickets ahead.

Yu Garden and the Old Town

Yu Garden is a classical Chinese garden right in the middle of the Old Town. It's more than 400 years old, and it's small, about the size of two football fields.

Inside there are ponds, rock formations, little wooden pavilions and narrow paths that twist around so you keep turning a corner and finding something new.

Don't expect peace and quiet though. This is one of the busiest spots in Shanghai. It's crowded through the day and stays crowded into the evening, so you'll be sharing every view with a lot of other people.

The streets around the garden are the Old Town. White walls, black roof tiles, curved rooflines, and stall after stall selling snacks, tea and souvenirs. Most of it was rebuilt in the 1990s to look old, so it isn't really historic. It's still a good place to wander for an hour and eat dumplings.

Go in the morning if you want it quieter. Fewer tour groups, more space, and you can actually stop and look at things without being pushed along.

Go in the evening if you want it at its prettiest. That's when the whole place lights up, the lanterns come on and the buildings reflect in the water. It's the most beautiful it gets, and it's also the most crowded. Pick which one matters more to you.

The Former French Concession

For almost a hundred years, a part of Shanghai was controlled by France. The French ran it themselves, with their own police and their own rules, and they built a neighbourhood to match: tree-lined streets and low European houses. That ended in 1943, but the neighbourhood is still standing.

Everyone still calls it the French Concession. It sits south of the main shopping streets, and it's the nicest part of Shanghai to just walk around.

There aren't many famous sights here. It's a place to walk. You wander, sit in a café, and see what Shanghai looked like before the skyscrapers. A lot of the old houses are now small shops, galleries and coffee places. Some are still people's homes.

Tianzifang is a maze of narrow lanes packed with tiny shops, studios and cafés. People still live in the flats above them, so it feels like a real neighbourhood that shops moved into rather than somewhere built for tourists. Good for an hour of wandering with no plan.

Xintiandi is the same idea done expensively. The old stone-gate houses, called shikumen, have been turned into high-end restaurants, bars and shops.

If you only do one, pick by what you're after. Tianzifang is for culture and souvenirs. Xintiandi is for shopping, with brands like Sephora, Harmay and Lululemon, and plenty more from cosmetics to clothing.

Nanjing Road

Nanjing Road is Shanghai's main shopping street. The eastern part is closed to cars and runs from People's Square down towards the Bund, so you'll probably end up walking it whether you planned to or not.

It's wide, it's loud, and it's packed with department stores, electronics shops and international brands. If you want to shop, it's a great place to do it, because you get a lot of stores in one place.

The other reason to walk it is the scale. The buildings along it are huge and grand, and standing in the middle of that with the crowds moving around you is worth the walk.

At night the whole street lights up with neon signs in Chinese and English. That's the version worth seeing, even if you're not buying anything.

Nanjing Road West is the expensive end, where the luxury brands are. If you're not shopping for those, the eastern half is the more interesting walk.

Zhujiajiao Water Town

Zhujiajiao is an old canal town about an hour west of Shanghai. A water town means what it sounds like: the streets are canals, and people get around on boats.

The old part has houses that are a few hundred years old, narrow lanes, arched stone bridges, and small wooden boats you can hire to take you along the water. It looks nothing like the rest of Shanghai.

It's the closest water town to the city, which is why most people come here instead of travelling further out to Suzhou or Hangzhou.

It does get busy, especially during weekends and in the middle of the day. A weekday morning is the quietest it gets.

Half a day is enough. You can get there by metro (Line 17) or just take a taxi. Once you're there you don't need anything booked. Find a boat, pay on the spot, then walk into whichever restaurant looks good.

If you'd rather have it arranged, book a tour that covers the transport, the boat ride and lunch together.

Shanghai Disneyland

Shanghai Disneyland opened in 2016 and it's the newest Disney park in the world. It has the usual rides, shows and characters, plus a few things you won't find at any other Disney park, like the TRON roller coaster and a whole Pirates of the Caribbean area.

Whether it's worth a day depends entirely on you. If you're travelling with kids, or you like Disney parks, it's a good day out. If neither is true, skip it. You'll see a lot more of Shanghai in the same time.

The park is in the Pudong district of Shanghai. By metro it's around an hour from the city centre. By taxi it's a 30 to 40 minute ride, depending on traffic.

Download the official Shanghai Disney Resort app before you go. You don't normally need it just to get in, but it's very useful once you're there for checking ride wait times, using the park map, and booking things like Disney Premier Access.

You can buy tickets straight from Disney on its English website or in the app, or book them here through an official partner. Either way you can usually link the ticket to the app afterwards using your booking details.

Bring the original passport you used when booking. Shanghai Disney registers every ticket to a specific ID, and you may be asked to show it at the gate.

Buy in advance. Popular dates sell out, especially during weekends and Chinese public holidays.

What to Eat in Shanghai

Shanghai's most famous food is xiaolongbao, or soup dumplings. Small steamed dumplings with pork and hot soup sealed inside.

There's a technique to eating them. Pick one up with chopsticks, bite a small hole in the top, drink the soup out first, then eat the rest. If you just bite into it the soup goes everywhere, and it's hot enough to burn your mouth.

Din Tai Fung is the famous chain and an easy, reliable place to try them. It started in Taiwan rather than Shanghai, but it does them very well and there's an English menu.

If you want a niche experience, our own pick is Manman Tangbao on Gao'an Road. It's tiny, it's tucked into a quiet part of the old French Concession, and it isn't famous. The menu is only a few items long. It's mostly local people eating there, and the xiaolongbao are the best we've had in the city.

Here's the Chinese name: 曼曼汤包（高安路新里店）

Copy it straight from this page and paste it into your maps app or your taxi app, and it'll take you right to the door. Searching the English name won't find it.

Sheng jian bao are pork buns cooked in a pan. The dough is thicker and more bread-like than a soup dumpling, the bottom is fried until it's crisp and golden, and the top stays soft with sesame seeds and spring onion on it. There's hot soup inside these too, so take the same careful first bite. They're bigger than xiaolongbao, you'll find them at street stalls and small shops all over the city, and they cost almost nothing.

Hongshao rou is red-braised pork belly. Sweet, sticky and fatty. Many Shanghainese restaurants have it on the menu, and it often tastes very different from place to place, because every kitchen has its own recipe.

For street food, Wujiang Road near Nanjing Road West has many options during the day. Zhapu Road is where to go late at night for grilled skewers and noodles. Both are cheap, busy, and full of locals rather than tourists.

If you want a proper sit-down meal, here are two restaurants worth trying.

Lost Heaven ($$) serves Yunnan food inside an old French Concession villa. Yunnan is a province in China's southwest, and the food is spicier and more herbal than Shanghai cooking, with a lot of grilled meat and fresh flowers in the dishes. It's a beautiful room and usually easy to get a table.

Sheng Yong Xing ($$$) has one Michelin star and does Peking duck on the Bund, with windows looking out over the river. The ducks are roasted over jujube wood and carved at your table. Around $60 to $85 a person for a full meal, or about $70 for a whole duck if you just want the duck. Book ahead, especially for a window table.

Here's the Chinese name: 晟永興（外滩店）

How Long to Spend in Shanghai

One day. Start at the Bund early. Then Yu Garden and the Old Town, then walk the French Concession in the afternoon. Come back to the Bund after dark for the lights. If you still have the energy, go up one of the three towers across the river. You'll see the main things, but you'll be moving fast all day.

Three days. This is the right amount for most people.

• Day one: the Bund, one of the three towers across the river, Nanjing Road.
• Day two: Yu Garden and the Old Town in the morning, then the French Concession and Tianzifang or Xintiandi.
• Day three: Zhujiajiao, or Disneyland if you're travelling with kids.

Five days. You can add a day trip. Suzhou and Hangzhou are both about an hour away by high-speed train. Suzhou has classical gardens and canals. Hangzhou has West Lake, tea fields and temples.

Staying in Shanghai the whole five days isn't a bad idea either. You could spend a day at a 24-hour spa, do more shopping, or walk around the areas you'd otherwise skip. There are endless restaurants and coffee shops to discover. Every area in this guide is big enough that you could spend a full day just walking around without running out of new things to look at.

A few hours. If you've only got a short layover between flights, do the Bund, look at the Pudong skyline across the river, and see Yu Garden if there's time. Those are the must-visit places.

Check our Shanghai layover guide for the full layover itinerary. It shows how long it takes from the airport to each place and between places, and it recommends where to stay if you've got a short overnight layover.

What to Book Before You Fly

Flights and hotels. Shanghai is busy all year, so book early. Book your hotels and flights on Trip.com. This is a China-native platform, so it has the biggest selection of hotels around mainland China. They also offer free-cancellation options.

Shanghai Tower tickets. You can buy at the door, but booking ahead skips part of the queue and sometimes costs less. Same goes for the Shanghai World Financial Center and the Oriental Pearl Tower if you're going up one of those instead.

Day tours. If you're heading to Zhujiajiao, Suzhou or Hangzhou, book a few days ahead. The good ones sell out during weekends and Chinese public holidays.

Mobile data. Get a China eSIM or international roaming before you leave home, so the internet works the moment you land. You can also buy a SIM card at the airport.

A VPN. Google, Gmail, WhatsApp and Instagram are apps most people use every day, and none of them work in China without a VPN. Our China VPN guide covers which ones actually work. Some China eSIMs have a VPN built in, so check before you buy a separate one. Even then, download one or two before you leave. The moment you connect to hotel or café Wi-Fi, you'll need a VPN.

Alipay or WeChat Pay. Almost everything in Shanghai is paid by phone. Link your card to one of these apps before you fly. Setting them up from home can be confusing and a lot of the tutorials online are out of date, so we made our own China payment setup guide: both apps step by step, with 2026 screenshots of downloading, registering, adding your card and verifying your identity. It's $4.90 and you get it straight away. Carry a bit of RMB cash as a backup too, in case something goes wrong with the internet or your cards, so you have enough money for at least one or two days while you're dealing with the problem.

If you'd rather have it all in one place instead of reading through twenty different articles, we've put the important parts into one big guide. It covers visa-free entry, the arrival card, setting up WeChat Pay and Alipay, getting online with an eSIM or a VPN, booking trains and hotels, and every way of getting around, from public transport to the high-speed trains. Learn more about our China trip guide.

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Getting Around Shanghai

The metro is the easiest way to move around. It's clean, fast, cheap, and it goes almost everywhere. Every sign and announcement is in English as well as Chinese, so it's hard to get lost.

You don't need a ticket machine. Open Alipay or WeChat Pay, find the transport QR code, and scan it at the gate on the way in and again on the way out. You can also buy a physical transport card at any station if you'd rather.

Taxis are cheap compared to what you'd pay at home. The easiest way to get one is Didi, which is China's version of Uber, has an English setting, and is very cheap.

Shared bikes are everywhere and are very cheap. You unlock one with a mini app inside Alipay, ride it, then lock it in the same app when you're done, and it takes the money automatically. Shanghai is completely flat, so it's easy riding. Be careful with the traffic though, and keep an eye on cars and scooters.

FAQ

Do I need a visa to visit Shanghai?
It depends. If your country is on China's 30-day visa-free list, you don't. If your passport qualifies for the 240-hour transit policy and you're passing through China on your way to a third country, that covers you too. A smaller group of countries has a two-way agreement with China. Our visa-free countries hub tells you which one applies to you.

How long can I stay?
Up to 30 days on the 30-day policy. Up to 10 days on the 240-hour transit policy. If your country has a two-way agreement, it depends on your nationality.

Can I leave Shanghai and visit other cities?
On the 30-day policy, you can go almost anywhere in mainland China. A few areas need a separate permit, like Tibet, and some remote border zones aren't open to foreign travellers at all.

On the 240-hour transit policy you can travel across 24 provinces and regions, which covers most of the country and every major city. The places you can't go are mainly in the far west and northwest: Tibet, Xinjiang, Qinghai, Gansu, Ningxia, Inner Mongolia and Jilin. A few provinces are only partly open, so check before you plan a route somewhere remote.

Do I need a return ticket?
On the 240-hour transit policy, yes. You have to show you're leaving China for a different country. On the 30-day policy it isn't officially required, but bring one anyway. The airline may ask to see it at check-in.

Can I stay longer than my visa-free time?
If you already know you need longer, get a proper visa before you travel. If something happens while you're there and you have to stay, go to the local immigration office, called the Exit-Entry Administration, and apply for a stay permit before your visa-free period ends. Each case is decided on its own, so nothing is guaranteed.

Is Shanghai safe?
Yes. It's one of the safest big cities in the world and violent crime is rare. Keep an eye on your pockets in crowded places, same as anywhere else.

When's the best time to visit?
Spring, March to May, and autumn, September to November. The weather is mild and it isn't too busy. Summer is hot, humid and rainy. Winter is cold but clear, and cheaper because fewer people come.

Do people speak English?
In hotels, tourist areas and bigger restaurants, usually yes. Everywhere else, not much. Download a translation app before you go. Pointing at pictures on a menu works too.

Can I use my credit card?
Some hotels and bigger restaurants take foreign cards, but a lot of places don't. Set up Alipay or WeChat Pay before you fly, and carry some cash as a backup.

How do I get from the airport into the city?
Shanghai has two airports.

Pudong (PVG) handles most international flights, so this is probably where you'll land. It's east of the city, and there are 3 options:

• Taxi. The easiest. Around an hour. Roughly $20 to $30 for a normal car, or closer to $50 for a business-class one. Those are app prices. A pre-booked transfer or private driver costs more.
• Metro. The cheapest. Goes anywhere around the city, but takes well over an hour.
• Maglev. A magnetic train that gets you from the airport to the area near the Oriental Pearl Tower in 8 minutes. Worth it if you're on a short layover, want to see the city, and aren't carrying much luggage. It's a fun ride.

Hongqiao (SHA) is mostly domestic flights. It's closer to the centre, about 30 minutes away, and the metro goes straight from the terminal.

Where do I book tours and tickets?
Most travellers use Trip.com. It has English-language tours, day trips, attraction tickets and airport transfers.

Bottom Line

Shanghai is the easiest Chinese city to start with. The metro is simple, English signs are everywhere, and most of what you want to see sits close together.

If your country is on one of China's visa-free lists, you don't need a visa to come. Three days is enough to see the main things without rushing. One day works if Shanghai is a stop on a bigger trip. Five days lets you slow down, eat properly and take a day trip.

Meeting the visa-free conditions doesn't guarantee entry. The officer at the border makes the final decision. If you have questions before you book, you can call the China Immigration Service Hotline on 12367 inside China, or +86-12367 from outside China.

Sources

Visa policies can change. Always verify requirements with official Chinese government sources before traveling.

• National Immigration Administration — List of Countries Covered by Unilateral Visa Exemption
• National Immigration Administration — 240-Hour Transit Visa-Free Policy Interpretation
• National Immigration Administration — Mutual Visa Exemption Agreements
• National Immigration Administration — China Immigration Service Hotline 12367
• Shanghai Disney Resort — Official Site